Time Can Mend
by Amorisa
Summary: One shot. Post-series. DG may have forgotten, but the woods remember her. Beyond Finaqua, what was done cannot fade. A Tin Man Challenge fic.


**Title:** "Time Can Mend"  
**Author:** Rissy James  
**Characters:** DG, Glitch, Cain & Raw  
**Rating:** PG  
**Summary:** One-shot. Post-series. _DG may have forgotten, but the woods remember her. Beyond Finaqua, what was done cannot fade._

**Author's Note:** Written for Challenge 1-A ("Finaqua") at tm_challenge over on Livejournal.

* * *

**Time Can Mend**

The water whispered its gratitude. DG could hear it whenever she walked the lake-shore alone.

The swish of the reeds, the gentle lapping of wind-swept waves against the grassy banks, the kiss of the suns on bare skin; in all these things, she felt the land restoring. A chain of events that began with her, and an ordinary rock that had been saved... saved for the perfect day.

Now, all were perfect days, mostly. Her sister and mother rested quietly, their souls renewing. Her father smiled. Her friends laughed, and talked, and healed. Strangers visited, and sometimes they would find new acquaintances, or rekindle lost connections. Life went on.

But in the woods beyond the estate, there was a darkness that spoke to DG in a different way. Through silence, and through absence. Something unforgiving rested there that remembered too clearly the wrongs she had committed long before she could be _held accountable_. She could only feel it; the knowledge was instinctual.

It was Glitch that pointed it out to her on a day when they'd escaped the palace to explore the woods. Glitch was always ahead of her, eagerness hurrying him along. Cain followed behind them, studying the forest around him and seeing things that Glitch and DG would never have noticed. Raw walked behind Cain, contemplative and always slowest.

"Its too quiet," Glitch mused. "I haven't heard any birds for a while."

DG frowned; she stepped over a log in the path, straddling it briefly in a most unladylike manner. No one paid her any mind. There was a freedom away from the great house, an abundance of longer strides, louder sneezes and belly laughs. Walking on, she glanced behind to see Cain step over the obstruction without really seeing it.

"There were golden lyrelings in the gazebo," she told Glitch, navigating between two narrowly spaced mossy stones jutting out of the ground.

"That was by the lake," he reminded her. "I meant recently." He was right; the sweet, clear melodies of the lyrelings hadn't followed the group into the forest. Now, the quiet _really_ caught DG's attention, not as something enjoyable but as a telltale sign that something wasn't quite right.

She stopped walking to listen, as much as one could listen to relative silence. Glitch, as well, came to a halt ahead of her, cocking his head to the side as his eyes traveled up to the canopy. The light filtered down, freckling his pale skin.

"Could be the two of you spooked them up with all the ruckus you're causing," Cain said as he guided himself around DG. His shoulder brushed hers, and he planted himself exactly halfway between Glitch and the princess.

"No," DG said, "its not that. Its always this quiet when I come out this far."

If any of her friends had anything to say about her exploring alone, they kept it to themselves. Only Cain heaved a sigh. His eyes had gone skyward, following Glitch's to the ceiling of broad leaves, and the illumination of the suns above.

Raw stopped behind her then; his footsteps so easy and muffled that she hadn't realized he'd caught up. "Birds will return when ready," he all but whispered. "Not all brave like DG."

DG nodded, pretending that she understood. Raw always knew better. The gentle hand he had placed on her arm was meant to be comforting, but she didn't feel reassured in the slightest.

The group had chosen a path that led away from the cavern in which was buried the last of the innocence she and her sister had held... in truth, it didn't matter how far from the cave they'd gone, or that their words were light, or that they were safest when they four were together.

"Come on," DG sighed. "We should head back."

She motioned a hand for Glitch to follow; Cain began to walk back without a word.

The woods remembered. The woods, in the heart of the darkness that had scorched the country, wouldn't easily forget, wouldn't readily forgive. There was nothing to be done. The surface of the land was tainted... the contamination going much farther into the roots and the soil than she could hope to help.

The rain couldn't wash the land; the suns couldn't warm it. What magic could do, it had already done.

Only time could mend this place.


End file.
